Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)

[Flopsy]

Ok I finally got around to playing the first 2 ranks of RotL in its current state.

01 06 Play Bridge - not that easy as an early tutorial type level, had to resort to builder spamming to keep the level under control. I agree that this should be moved later in the pack.
01 08 How I learned to love the bomb - Save requirement is very low on this to allow for only hatch to be considered, it should at least be 50% or above.
01 11 Through Fire and Flames - except my route completely avoid the lot, not sure if this is acceptable behaviour.
01 13 Long Way to Fall - Pointed out this one to see if my well timed 2 skill solution is ok
01 16 Eeny Meeny Miny oh - This one seemed a bit too trivial and without Clear physics mode I imagine would have been a very annoying level.
01 23 Stranded - I think I made this one super easy but I guess it is an ok route to take.
01 25 Song of the Lemming - This can be solved easily in 3 skills, without a major fix I think this level is unsalvageable
01 26 Codrin - First truely challenging level of the rank, it's not too hard though when you see Climbers = No of Lemmings
01 29 Rounds and Swingabouts - I'm with Proxima, this level is probably Rank 3 minimum, this is some high entropy stuff!
01 30 The Shaft - This one is quite difficult too because of the high save requirement, I'm not even sure if the right exit is even possible on this one.

No Solves in first 2 ranks. I have not resolved the MazuLems levels but I know I could solve them from my LP.
01 29 Rounds and Swingabouts - yeah....
02 03 Kung Fu Bashing - This one I just could not figure out.
02 05 Training Zone Alpha - This one is way beyond my ability as with 01 29
02 21 Turn It Around - Probably could have solved this one with more time but it is not my kind of puzzle
02 27 Crossing Paths - Couldn't comprehend this one.
02 30 Final Countdown - It's a Crane level, need I say more? I really did try to solve this one but his levels just rub me up the wrong way.

Easy rank 2 levels which could move down maybe
02 01 First Things First - maybe not because it is a good named level 1 for a rank
02 08 Crystal Caves - It's not too bad for multitaskers players.
02 10 Lem Dunk - This would make a good Rank 1 level and it's fun to play.
02 15 A Step Too Far? - I could see multiple ways to do this level and it can be solved with no destructive skills whatsoever.
02 17 The Endless Steps - This is SO EASY without Timed bombers.
02 18 Out on a Lem - This one wasn't too bad to solve.
02 24 Works on so many levels - Save requirement is generous, I was sloppy on this and still saved enough.
02 28 Altitude Training - Might be difficult due to no bashers but I found this one very easy.


I've also attached my replays.

[Crane]

Personally with Song of the Lemming, it could probably have some left-facing arrows re-inserted, which were removed from the later repeat (there are left and right arrows side-by-side that effectively act as steel, since this level was made before the bubble tileset got its steel blocks).

[Proxima]

Feedback updated to include Hootenanny. There are good levels here, but they are not well-sorted as to difficulty, with several harder levels coming at the start of the rank, and some towards the end that could move earlier.

EDIT: I just cross-referenced with Clammings, and both "Rounds and Swingabouts" and "Training Zone Alpha" are in the Insane rank there.

Also, the Lix version of "A step too far?" has cubers instead of blockers. NL doesn't have cubers, of course, but we could just remove the blockers to make it less trivial.

[Proxima]

Oh, I think I've solved the mystery of Training Zone Alpha

Carnage 9 "Training Zone Omega" is this level's repeat, but it's almost the same level; there is a slight different in the skillset but not enough to justify the two being placed this far apart. Clearly, Hootenanny 5 was meant to be an easier repeat. Clammings contains only one of this repeat pair, and it's the hard version but it's called "Training Zone Alpha".

I would guess that at some point, someone imported the level from Clammings, didn't realise that the "Alpha" level there was the hard version, and saved over the easy repeat with a copy of the hard version.

Still no clue as to why "Rounds and Swingabouts" was placed in rank 1 though!

[Crane]

There's a lot of talk about "Rounds and Swingabouts" being too hard for the first rating.  I vaguely remember seeing it in another pack, where the skillset was quite restricted.  In Revenge of the Lemmings, the level has 20 of everything, but no Floaters, and you had to save 20 out of 30 Lemmings if I remember correctly.

Regarding "Eeny, meeny, miny... OH!", all of the traps are slightly visible if you pay attention, otherwise it's working out where to use the lone Builder.

Is "The Final Countdown" really that difficult? Granted, it is designed to be the final level of a rating.  The fact my levels rub you up the wrong way makes me feel sad.

ADDENDUM: The intended solution to "The Final Countdown" shouldn't give you time trouble, but if there's multiple solutions, then I guess I can't argue with removing or increasing the time limit.  Here's the intended solution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zPaFEzAPh4

[Proxima]

"Rounds and Swingabouts" has 1 climber, 2 bombers, 15 builders, 10 bashers and 4 miners, and the save requirement is 24/30. Looks like another case where the hard level was accidentally pasted into the slot intended for its easy repeat

My solution to "The Final Countdown":

Spoiler

Same as yours with slight rearrangement, but I had the digger dig on the single pixel of normal terrain next to the steel so he continued all the way down before having him bash along the bottom and then be the climber/worker on that side. I guess that's on me for not realising I could dig down the terrain between the steel blocks and survive from the bottom. If you wanted, though, you could enlarge the steel blocks slightly so there isn't that single pixel.

[Crane]

I first made the level in DOS lemmings where Diggers would continue down that single pixel and (in my mind) would take too long to reach the bottom.  I would prefer the steel to be all the way across.

I myself was given the RotL files some years ago but just sat on them.  I originally helped möbius with choosing music and occasionally selecting levels, for better or for worse.  Now I'm struggling to find some of my original files - I had made some modifications to a couple of levels that appear in Holiday Lemmings '16 - now I need to find those files too!  Namely "A wave goodbye" (was "Someone must help us"), where a wall was made thinner and the time limit reduced from 4 minutes to 3:30 in order to patch a pair of backroutes (one of them finished the level with a few seconds to spare, so shrinking the time limit made sure to tell the player that this is not the way), and the other one was "Spiralling Snowstorm", where I added some icicles to the ceiling to prevent a backroute with a Builder hitting their head on the ceiling (before it became deadly), but this level will need some additional work in order to make the level actually possible to complete because of Climbers hitting the aforementioned deadly ceiling.

For "Rounds and Swingabouts", it definitely had 20 of everything (except Floaters) originally and a 20/30 save requirement, I believe, although 24/30 is fine too.  The harder version didn't appear in RotL at all.  For "Training Zone Alpha", it had a save target of 100% (also the reason why "Crystal Caves" is not in Picnic) but had 10 of everything, I believe.

[WillLem]

Happy to help with this, anything that still needs doing?

[Flopsy]

Happy to help with this, anything that still needs doing?

We are currently ordering the levels in the first 2 ranks, it would be nice to have more opinions on which levels are under-ranked or over-ranked. The more people that have opinions on the level ordering in the topic, the better the pack will be overall

[WillLem]

Here's some feedback from the first rank, bearing in mind that I'm very much an intermediate solver. Hope it's useful:

Picnic

Level 6 Play Bridge: I like this level as it was originally - you can avoid it being a builder-fest by using the two blocks either side of the entrance as "blockers" (by having the first few lemmings build up to them) - this works best when the lemmings are coming out in both directions, as per the original level (N.B. My replay reflects this; I put the left-facing entrance back in to the level).

Level 7 Ups and Downs: Possibly a bit too difficult for the first rank as it requires keeping track of several miners at once across a large landscape. A good level though.

Level 10 Arrow keys will help you here!: Good level, but I solved it using mainly diggers and builders, which I feel misses the point slightly. I've attached an alternative version of this level which preserves its design but amplifies the point of it being an arrow-key exercise.

Level 25 Song of the Lemming: It's a beautiful looking level, seems a shame to get rid of it. I've attached a quick re-design to make it a bit more of a challenge but hopefully still in line with the other levels in this rank difficulty-wise - feel free to make any further necessary tweaks if the final decision is to keep this level in the pack.

Level 30 The Shaft: To be fair, this is a relatively easy solve once you realise that

Spoiler

there's a left exit

, managed to get 100%! For that reason, I'm undecided as to whether I'd vote to keep it in this rank or move it up. See what others say...

Level 16 Eeeny, meeny, miney...OH!: I think this level is super! It's a welcome little change from the preceding levels, with its single lemming and generally different sort of puzzle than just terrain building/destruction. Well worth keeping, IMHO.

Levels 11, 15, 20, 23,  - Through Fire And Flames, Gotta Save 'em all, Not a basher tutorial, Stranded- These levels are my favourites, and could be viewed as the difficulty standard for this first rank. Nice and easy but still require a bit of thinking through.

Overall, really enjoyed these. They're are the the kind of playable levels I'm hoping to get good at making.

[Crane]

I know there are some levels later on that might need replacing or reordering.  "Tribute to Benny Hill" wasn't too well-received, for example, and it seems not many people like "Oh No! Not Again!".

One thing that I'll mention about the Armageddon rating... I always felt that "Duality" works best as a penultimate level rather than the final level.  For the final level, I would like to suggest a previously secret level, "From the Brink", if only because you can then make the joke at the very end that you saved the lemmings From the Brink of Armageddon.

Spoiler

It would become the only level with a nuke solution though.

[Crane]

In the meantime, here is my own fix of "Song of the Lemming" that fixes the most glaring problem.

Also find attached the intended easier version of "Rounds & Swingabouts"

[Proxima]

For "Song of the Lemming" and its sequel, if the dual one-way arrows were intended to be, in effect, a steel area, why not replace them with actual steel now that we can do that?

I feel strongly that because this is a "best-of" pack, we should limit changes to ones that make the same levels work better, rather than redesigning them into our own levels based on the originals. For instance, unlimited time and steel in the Bubble set weren't available when these levels were made, but it's a reasonable guess that the designers might have used them if they had been. We can fix backroutes that the original designers may have not fixed because they didn't find them. But WillLem's proposed changes are too drastic. If there are any levels that can't work without drastic changes, we should accept that they don't belong in a "best-of" pack and cut them.

[Crane]

It is true that the one-way arrows are intended to be steel.  I'll see if I can cleanly add in steel plates for Perfect Harmony.

For Song of the Lemming, I would argue for keeping the left-facing one-way arrows because putting steel there might make the level a bit too hard for Picnic, what with trying to navigate all the water pools, plus it would make the best solution too similar to its repeat (for an example where the harder solution is disguised, take a look at "Singularity" and its repeat in Armageddon, "Duality").

I have the raw files for Revenge of the Lemmings somewhere, given to me by möbius some years back, but I don't know which hard drive they're on.

Also, part of me likes to have a time limit in every level for this pack, even if it is far more time than you'll ever need, because it's meant to have a traditional feel to it, not least because of it only using the original 8 tools and no switches, zombies or neutrals etc.  Also, it disguises the levels that have a genuine time crunch to them.

UPDATE: Here's Perfect Harmony with steel instead of the mixed one-way arrows, and what I think is the intended solution.  I also shrunk one of the water pools to make the solution fairer (otherwise the second miner would be one pixel away from death).

[WillLem]

But WillLem's proposed changes are too drastic. If there are any levels that can't work without drastic changes, we should accept that they don't belong in a "best-of" pack and cut them.

Yeah, this is a fair comment as far as Song of the Lemming goes, I took quite a bit of creative licence with that one!

However, I'd maintain that my version of Arrows is probably more to the point of it being a tutorial level for using the directional arrows. The original can be solved by just using a digger pit and some builders. I'd like to see what the consensus is on this before it gets dismissed completely.

Perhaps these contributions serve as benchmarks for what might constitute a "drastic" change, in which case I've helped to define that, at least...!